Let’s take a slightly different approach with this week’s matchup breakdown previewing South Carolina’s Saturday night battle against Tennessee and review how the Gamecocks approach their pivotal ‘Orange Crush’ portion of the schedule.

Not long ago, before South Carolina’s 2010 Eastern Division championship kick-started three consecutive years of dominance, South Carolina fans expected a November swoon.

Games against Florida, Tennessee and Clemson to end the regular-season were usually nationally-ranked affairs with little to no chance at a sweep. Known as the ‘Orange Crush’ portion of the slate in Columbia, the season-defining stretch often knocked the Gamecocks down a few pegs in bowl placement and disrupted what began as promising campaigns.

This season, Spurrier hopes his team’s final three games against long-time rivals are used as a catalyst, an opportunity to erase some of this year’s midseason misfortune in favor of a strong finish.

The Gamecocks are in unfamiliar territory heading into the last month of the regular season, 4-4 for the first time in 10 seasons since under the HBC.

“We have three of the four big games left, they’re all big games, but you think about our rivals in the conference; Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee are the three biggest,” Spurrier said during Tuesday’s weekly presser. “Then of course in-state with the Clemson game. We’ll see what we can do. We had some good fortune last year, except we lost to Tennessee and Georgia, but we’re one up with three to play on those four teams.”

Gamecocks’ record overall against the ‘Orange Crush’ under Spurrier

  • Clemson 6-3 (Five-game winning streak)
  • Florida 4-5 (One win in Gainesville, 2010)
  • Tennessee 5-4 (Three straight home wins)

Wins over those three teams to close out the regular season — plus a victory over South Alabama on Senior Day — puts South Carolina at 8-4, in great position for a bowl berth outside of Charlotte or Birmingham.

To get there, Spurrier says, vast improvements need to be made.

Despite ranking last in the SEC in scoring defense (32.8 PPG) and against the run (208.4), the Gamecocks could very well be 6-2 at this point if they would’ve closed out games against Mizzou and Kentucky earlier in the season. In both of those losses, South Carolina had two-touchdown leads in the fourth quarter before faltering.

“There’s a lot of things we can do better … block better, run better, throw better, catch better, all of those kinds of things, stop the other team better,” Spurrier said. “It’s a combination of a little bit of everything. We haven’t finished when we’ve had an opportunity to finish the game.”